DrJames Collins II

Senior Lecturer in Ancient Greek Language and Literature

Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

Research projects & supervision summary

Project Opportunities

Title: Ancient Philosophy

Summary of opportunity:

James Collins is Senior Lecturer in Greek Language and Literature in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Sydney, and Associate for Civic and Philosophical Engagement at Harvard’s Center for Hellenic Studies. He uses a variety of literary, philosophical, sociological, and neuroscientific approaches to study the pragmatics of intellectual life in antiquity, with a principal focus on philosophical recruitment (Exhortations to Philosophy. Oxford 2015) and ancient education including choral training and performance (“Dancing the Virtues, Becoming Virtuous,” Ramus 42: 183-206). He is founder and director of the interdisciplinary Performing Wisdom program which develops strategies for introducing people of all walks and ages to philosophy as an active, often public discipline through dramatic and rhetorical training and performance. He has staged over a dozen productions of ancient Greek tragedy and comedy with school and university students, military veterans, and working professionals.

Opportunity synopsis:

Research interests

  • Ancient Philosophy
  • Ancient Drama
  • Intellectual and Social History
  • Performance Theory

RESEARCH PROJECTS & ACTIVITIES

  • RESEARCH-BASED DEGREE SUPERVISION
    Feeling Good About Feeling Bad: The Value of Tragedy Horror and Cathartic Art.
  • RESEARCH-BASED DEGREE SUPERVISION
    Hippocrates' medicine through the lens of a modern physician
  • RESEARCH-BASED DEGREE SUPERVISION
    Plato's Imaging of Man City and God: The Timaeus in Context
  • RESEARCH-BASED DEGREE SUPERVISION
    Plutarch’s Lives: In Search of Identity
  • RESEARCH-BASED DEGREE SUPERVISION
    Roman Receptions in British Suffragist Writings
  • RESEARCH-BASED DEGREE SUPERVISION
    The ἀπράγμων Busybody: Political Engagement and Socratic Politics in Gorgias, Republic and Theaetetus
  • RESEARCH-BASED DEGREE SUPERVISION
    Utopianism in Ancient Greek Thought